CHAPTER ONE: TRUE TESTIMONIES

ANGIE

Angie was a young woman in her early twenties. Although voluptuously endowed, she dressed modestly as became her position as church secretary at Ascension Chapel, located somewhere on the west coast of the United States. Angie was a dedicated church worker. She lived in the women’s communal home situated closest to the church, and attended all the home Bible studies. She also went to all the weekly church services on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and sat in the front row, right next to the pastor’s wife. Angie adored her pastor and would have done anything for him. Giving her body to the darkly-handsome, middle-aged pastor/evangelist seemed but one more act of dedication to God for this deceived young woman.

Angie would spend more than six years as this pastor’s mistress, sitting next to his wife during services, while he stood in the pulpit preaching morality to his very large flock of sheep. Some, including the pastor’s wife, knew or suspected that Angie was sexually involved with him. But no one dared to voice their suspicions, and no one stepped in to rescue Angie. The focus of the elders and the church council was on protecting the pastor and the ministry at all costs. After all, this was the anointed man of God, and God’s word clearly says: “Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm.” (1 Chron. 16:22; Ps. 105:15). Wasn’t that very passage often shouted at the congregation from the pulpit? And weren’t people blessed and set free and healed at every service? The one who dared to “touch” the church’s spiritual ark would be responsible for ending a ministry that God was using to bless many people. How could anyone be that selfish? Better just to “pray about it” and believe God would fix it because “…[W]e know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” (Rom. 8:28).

Fortunately, Angie did escape after six years of physical and spiritual bondage to this womanizing man who eventually lost his congregation and his pulpit. Miraculously, Angie didn’t lose her walk with God. She eventually married a good Christian man and had children. But how many more Angies not only lose their spiritual innocence to a predatory shepherd, but lose their relationship with God as a result?

BETTY

Betty was in her early thirties, a slender and pretty blond who had been through a terrible marriage and divorce. She turned to the Lord, and found herself in a semi-charismatic denominational church in the Midwest.

The pastor was a very large and very overweight man in his early fifties. He had a ministry that was quickly becoming nationwide, and had already published two books that were selling well. He and his wife ministered to Betty, and welcomed her into their church. Since Betty had administrative skills, she began helping out part time in the church office. Betty put in long hours and even took work home. Soon she was helping the pastor put his sermons onto tapes to market them for sale, and was working on translating his second book into Spanish.

Betty threw herself wholeheartedly into service for the Lord; before long, she began writing sermons of her own. She shared these with her pastor, who complimented her on them, and took copies home with him.

The pastor began calling Betty at home. On several occasions, he asked her to come and drive him to work when his car was being repaired. Betty began sensing something wrong in his spirit and felt a heaviness in the church office when the pastor was there. Over the next year, the pastor’s wife grew colder and colder toward Betty. Betty felt the distance between them and mentioned it to the pastor. He brushed off Betty’s concern by telling her that his wife had a long-standing insecurity problem, and not to let it bother her.

One day, Betty had a project spread out all over the church floor and was sitting cross-legged in blue jeans trying to stack things into organized piles. The pastor quietly came in behind her and stood, watching her intently. A strange feeling came over Betty, and she looked up to see an expression on her pastor’s face she’d never seen before. He left the room quickly. It wasn’t long after this, that he sought deliverance ministry from the spirit of lust.

Betty escaped that pastor and fled the church before he could make an overt move on her. She understood that he had developed inappropriate feelings for her. Looking back, she could see how he’d been moving closer and closer to her since her first day there. She understood his wife’s coldness, and wondered if the pastor had made moves on other women before her. Perhaps that lady parishioner who called him daily at his office – the one who caused his face to flush and made him laugh uproariously. But his wife had never approached Betty to talk about her husband, nor had she voiced any concerns she had about his behavior.

Two years after leaving the church, Betty was leafing through that pastor’s third book and found that some of the sermons she had written and shared with him had become chapters in his book, without her knowledge or permission. To add insult to injury, a copyright violation warning appeared in his forward.

CLARA

Clara was a middle-aged woman in her early fifties. She and her husband had recently moved to a small rural town near the Gulf of Mexico. Being spirit-filled Christians, they were looking for a charismatic church, and tried several in the surrounding metropolitan area.

While visiting one of these, during a Sunday evening service, the pastor and numerous male elders sat on a platform facing the congregation. The pastor was an older man, probably in his late sixties, but it was hard to tell how old he really was. The broken red veins on his face showed the ravages of alcoholism. Part of his testimony was that he had indeed been delivered form alcohol. And part of the ministry of the church was to help pull young men and women out of addictions. Many of these reformed and restored former addicts now played musical instruments in the very large church band. All were dressed nicely, and one of the rules was that women must wear dresses to church.

During the service, several men testified about their deliverances, and Clara and her husband commented to each other that here seemed to be a church that was really ministering in the spirit of Christ. Then came the final portion of the service, the time for personal ministry. The pastor and elders began to pray for those who came forward, as the band played softly. The ministry continued for almost an hour. The pastor began laying hands on the women who came for ministry. Some fell to the floor “under the power.” But by the time Clara and her husband left, this “personal ministry” had degenerated to the point where the red-faced pastor was crawling around on the floor among the women who had fallen at his feet. He was laying hands on their heads, stroking their hair, and travailing in long, loud prayer over each of them. He looked for all the world like a drunk crawling around among his harem.

“Something is really wrong here,” Clara commented to her husband as they left. Later that same week, Clara met one of her new neighbors, Jane, and happened to mention their visit to this church. Coincidentally, Jane had attended that church for years with her ex-husband. She confirmed Clara’s suspicions. Yes, the pastor had slept with several of the parishioners, and had been found in the home of one of the women the night his wife had taken ill and been hospitalized. He had also propositioned the wife of the pastor in one of the church’s satellite churches, and that woman had filed a lawsuit against him. (Jane showed Clara a news clipping about the lawsuit.) The suit was dropped after the church elders collected $10,000, and gave it to the offended wife to settle out of court.

Jane herself recounted a troubling meeting with this pastor when she went to him for marital counseling for her own rocky marriage. As she entered his office, he told her to move away from the window, and then he embraced her in a full frontal hug. Jane could feel that he was obviously aroused. She pushed him away, and asked him what he thought he was doing. He told her not to take it wrong, that he was just being a pastor ministering to his sheep. She left the office, and that church, and never returned to any church again. Now, almost 20 years after these incidents, this pastor is still in his pulpit.

DIANA

Diana was a professional woman in her early fifties, who looked much younger than her age. She was a petite lady with an open smile, sporting a mop of unruly curly auburn hair. Like Clara and her husband, Diana was in search of a spirit-filled church and was visiting the area churches. One Sunday morning, she dropped into a local non-denominational, independent charismatic church. The sanctuary was alive with young families and young adults, with just a smattering of elderly folk. The pastor was a very handsome man in his mid forties, with a southern drawl, who dressed and postured as if he could have been a popular country singer. His wife was a pretty blond of about his same age.

The worship service was very boisterous – with loud music, clapping, dancing and banner waving. The pastor preached a “hell-fire and brimstone” message against sin. In the process, he testified that he had been a “womanizer,” but that God had delivered him from that. The congregation “amen-ed” him at every opportunity during his sermon, which was very long and wandered down the many paths “the Lord led” him to preach.

The pastor noticed Diana almost immediately, and seemed to be preaching a lot of the sermon directly to her. He strutted as he preached, occasionally jumping up on an empty pew, then posing upon it with one hand on his hip and the other on the hand-held microphone. When he struck this pose, he paused and surveyed the congregation to make sure all eyes were transfixed on him. They were.

Diana attended this church for several Sundays. One Sunday after church, the pastor’s wife, Tina, approached Diana as she left the building. Tina introduced herself, and then a strange conversation followed. Right off the bat, she asked Diana how old she was. Unaccustomed to such blatant rudeness, Diana was taken off guard and told her. Relief filled the pastor’s wife’s face. “Oh, then you’re not… well a lot of women…you don’t look that old…my husband, you know…” Tina went on to tell Diana that she felt that she herself looked old, and that she wanted to stay young looking because of all the competition from the young women in the church. Diana pondered the bizarre encounter on her way home, wondering what might lie under the carpet in that church.

The following Sunday, when Diana was worshipping at the church with hands raised and eyes closed, she felt a wave of lust come over her. She opened her eyes to see the pastor looking intently at her. Under her breath, Diana quickly rebuked the spirit and bound it, not knowing if it came from him or through him. At the same moment, Diana looked at the woman sitting next to her – a pretty brunette with short hair, whose husband sat on her other side. This woman looked at the pastor, then at Diana, then back at the pastor again. The look was clearly jealousy. “What is going on here?” Diana thought to herself.

Over the next several weeks, Diana watched the interaction between the pastor and the brunette. During one service, the intercessors were asked to come forward to pray for the pastor as he left on a missionary trip. The brunette ran up onto the stage to position herself directly behind the pastor. Laying her hands on his head, she looked toward heaven, praying passionately for his safety. Another time, during an evening prayer meeting, the brunette was there without her husband and sat directly behind the pastor in the pew. He often glanced at her over his arm which was leisurely stretched across the pew where he sat, while his wife prayed elsewhere in the church. Yet another time, during a Sunday morning worship service, when the dancing began, the brunette got out of her seat and went up to the front of the church, dancing directly in front of the pastor who was on the platform above her. He then descended from the platform and danced by her side. And every Sunday, when the pastor invited people to come forward who needed prayer, the brunette was right there, kneeling, while watching the pastor longingly until he got to her. Always during ministry time, the brunette would go forward to weep at the altar, ensuring that the pastor would kneel before her and lay hands on her head.

A month was enough to convince Diana that there was spiritual adultery happening here (if not actual adultery). Diana left and resumed her search for a church. She was fortunate. Judging from the piercing and lingering looks that former pastor was sending in Diana’s direction, had she not had the gift of discernment of spirits, she could have been drawn into that adulterous mess herself. Many women are.

And as it turns out, that pastor was indeed involved in a 15-year adulterous relationship with one of his sheep, which eventually ended his marriage to Tina, and emptied the church. Most of his board had known about it for some time, some had talked to him about it, but no one wanted to remove him from the pulpit.

ESTHER